During the process of manufacturing polymeric films such as optical films, the web needs to be wound onto cores to form the rolls of material to be sold. Typically, a cut transfer process is used to begin winding the web onto the core. In a cut transfer process, the starting end of the web is adhered to a core using a strip of adhesive tape, or a strip of doubled sided adhesive tape. Because of this attachment scheme, the leading edge of the web is over-lapped by the subsequent layers of wound web, and causes an effective disparity on the core surface which can increase the stress in adjacent web layers. This disparity can propagate impressions to several adjacent layers of the web, causing defects that are often referred to as core impressions. These core impressions can be observed on many of the initial layers of wound web material on each roll, and can be considered as wasted product.